Epistle to the Romans

The Epistle to the Romans was a letter written by Paul the Apostle to the Christian Church in Rome in 60 AD, now included as the sixth book of the New Testament and as the first of the epistles.

Chapter 1
Paul the Apostle began the letter by greeting "All God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints" with grace and peace from God and Jesus. Paul thanked God through Jesus for the Roman Christians because their faith was proclaimed in all the world, and he said how he always mentioned the Roman Christians in his prayers, as he hoped that by God's will he could visit them and impart some spiritual gift to strengthen them. Paul also said that, while he often intended to come to the Christians, he had been thus far prevented by persecutions. He wrote "I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish: so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome." He notably stated that the ower of God would save everyone who had faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. He also said that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppressed the truth, that the knowledge of God was plain to them because God showed it to them, and that ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, his eternal power, and deity was obvious to his critics, so they had no excuse. Paul wrote, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles." Therefore, Paul claimed, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions; their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, gossip, slander, hate, insolence, haughtiness, boastfulness, evil, disobedience, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness.

Chapter 2
Paul reiterated that, therefore, the Christians of Rome had no excuse when judging another, for in passing judgment upon others they condemned themselves, as they did the very same things. Paul claimed that God would render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing sought for glory, honor, and immortality, he would give them eternal life; but for those who were factious and did not obey the truth, but obeyed wickedness, there would be wrath and fury. Paul stressed that God showed no partiality. All who sinned without the law would perish without the law, and all who sinned under the law would be judged by the law. Paul said that it was not the hearers of the law who were righteous before God, but the doers of the law who would be justified. When gentiles who had not the law did by nature what the law required, they were a law to themselves, even though they did not have the law. Paul then wrote that, if one called themself a Jew and relied upon the law and boasted of their relation toGod and knew hiw ill and approved what is excellent, because they were instructed in the law, and if they were a guide to the blind, a light in the darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, and making the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth,the person had to teach themself as they taught others. He asked, "While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, 'The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.'" Paul said that circumcision was indeed of value if one obeyed the law, but if one broke the law, the circumcision became uncircumcision. If a man who was uncircumcised kept the precepts off the law, his uncircumcision would be regarded as circumcision. Then those who were physically uncircumcised but kept the law would condemn he who had the written code and circumcision but broke the law, for a real Jew was not an outwardly person, nor was true circumcision something external and physical. A Jew, according to Paul, was one inwardly, and a real circumcision was a matter of the heart, spiritual, and not literal; his praise was not from men but from God.

Chapter 3
Paul said that Jews had advantages and circumcision had value much in every way, as the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God, and that their faithlessness did not nullify the faithfulness of God, as he would be true though every man be false. But if human wickedness served to show the justice of God, Paul argued that humans could not claim that God was unjust to inflict wrath on them, as he had to judge the world. Paul then concluded that Jews were not better off than others, as both Jews and Greeks were under the power of sin. Paul wrote that, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which was in Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith to show God's righteousness.

Paul argued that human boasting was thus excluded on the principle of faith, not works, for a man was justified by faith apart from the works of law. Paul then wrote that God was the God of both the Jews and the Gentiles, and he would justify both the circumcised and uncircumcised on the ground of their faith; he also said that Christians uphold the law by their faith.

Chapter 4
Paul then wrote of how Abraham was justified by works to boast, but not before God, as he believed God and saw his righteousness. To one who worked, his wages were not reckoned as a gift but as his due; to one who did not work but trusted God and who justified the ungodly, his faith was reckoned as righteousness. Faith was reckoned to Abraham as a righteousness before he was circumcised, with the circumcision serving as a sign or seal of the righteousness by which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If the adherents of the law were to be the heirs, faith was null and the promise was void, as the law brought wrath, but where there was no law there was no transgression. This is why it depended on faith, in order that the promise would rest on grace and be guaranteed not only to Abraham's descendants, but to those who shared the Abrahamic faiths.

Chapter 5
Since humans were justified by faith, they would have peace with God through Jesus, through whom humanity obtained access to God's grace and rejoiced in their hope of sharing God's glory. They also rejoiced in their sufferings, knowing that suffering produced endurance, which produced character, which produced hope, and which did not disappoint humanity, as God's love was poured into humanity's hearts through the Holy Spirit who had been given to humans. While humanity was yet helpless, Jesus died at the right time for the ungody. Therefore, as sin came through the towlrd through one man and death through sin, death would spread to all men because all men sinned. However, sin would not be counted when there was no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam. But the free gift was not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more had the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus abounded for many. And the free gift was not like the effect of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more would those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reigned in life through Jesus. As one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness led to acquittal and life for all men. Law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus.

Chapter 6
Paul objected to the thought that humans were to continue in sin that grace may abound, asking how humans who died to sin could still live in it. All of the baptized Christians were also baptized into Jesus' death, were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Jesus was raised from the dead by God's glory, humanity too might walk in newness of life. If humanity would be united with Jesus in a death like his, humanity would be united with him in a resurrection like his. Humanity's old selves were crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and humanity would no longer be enslaved to sin. In addition, if humans died with Christ, they believed that they would also live with him, and humans had to consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus. Paul then exhorted the Romans not to let sin reign in their mortal bodies and to make them obey their passions, and to not yield members to sin as instruments of wickedness. Instead, they should yield themselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and to act as instruments of righteousness. He then reassured that the wages of sin was death, but the free gift of God was eternal life in Jesus.